Thoughts and Ruminations

Bethany and I watched Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” the other day, and I have to say I was impressed with his balanced approach to this one (as opposed to the G.W. Bush hate-fest that Fahrenheit 9/11 was).  Aside from my appreciation of Moore’s sarcastic wit and the powerful stories of suffering persons in Sicko, the most insightful and important part of the movie, in my opinion, was Moore’s conversation with former member of Parliament Tony Benn.  I went ahead and transcribed it word for word, and I’ll bold what I thought were the most important insights by Tony.  I found a shorter Youtube video that has a fragment of the interview as well.  His thoughts on democracy and the power of the people to effect change are incredible, and really show how cynical and lazy Americans are in comparison to other places in the world when it comes to working for social change.

Benn:  It all began with democracy.  (Before) if you had money, you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet to the ballot.

And what people said was very simple, “In the 1930s we had mass unemployment, but we didn’t have unemployment during the War.  If you can have full employment by killing Germans, we can have full employment by building hospitals, by building schools, recruiting nurses, recruiting teachers.  If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.

This  leaflet that was issued in 1948 is very straightforward;

“Your new national health service begins on the 5^th of July. What is it and how do you get it?  It will provide you with all medical, dental, and nursing care, everyone rich or poor, man or child, can use it or part of it, there are no charges except for a few exceptional items, there are no insurance qualifications, but it is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in times of illness.”

Somehow the few words sum the whole thing up.  Even Margaret Thatcher said, “It’s safe in our hands.”  It’s as non-controversial as votes for women.  Nobody could come along now and say, “Why should women vote?”  People wouldn’t have it, and they wouldn’t accept the deterioration or destruction of the National Health Service.

Moore:  “If Thatcher or Blair said, ‘I’m going to dismantle the National Health Service?’”

Benn:  There would be a revolution, yep…

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world.  Far more revolutionary than socialist ideas or anyone else’s ideas.  If you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.  And this idea of choice, which capitalism talks about all the time, ‘You’ve gotta have a choice,’ choice depends on the freedom to choose, and if you’re shackled with debt, you don’t have the freedom to choose.

Moore:  It seems like it benefits the system if the average working person is shackled with debt

Benn:  Yes, people in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote.  So people say, “Well, everyone should vote.”  I say that if the poor in Britain and the United States turned out and voted for people who represented their interests, it would be a real democratic revolution.  They (the system) don’t want that to happen, so (they’re)  keeping people hopeless and pessimistic. 

I think there are two ways people are controlled.  First, they are frightened people, and secondly, demoralized.  An educated, healthy, and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there’s an element of thinking in some people, “We don’t want people to be educated, healthy, and confident, because they would get out of control. 

The top 1% of the world’s population own 80% of the world’s wealth.  It’s incredible that people put up with it!  But, they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened, and therefore think perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best.

Jeremiah Wright and Cornel West have awakened me from my middle-class white slumber in the last three months.  Lost amidst all the hullabaloo from 10-second sound-bites yanked from the greater context of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons which news organizations then talked hours on is the greater message Jeremiah is seeking to convey to the American nation. Jeremiah Wright is not Obama’s lapdog, and Obama is not his. Barack Obama is a politician, and Jeremiah Wright is an eloquent, shockingly-honest, sometimes-divisive pastor of God’s church.  The two are very different things. In order for us to understand the experience of the black church and the foundation from which Wright speaks, we need to move beyond the sound-bites and into a good, full listen to him in the videos below; even if, or especially if, we disagree with him.

If you are a person who is sick and tired of news organizations telling us what we should believe and showing us what we should see, please give this man a full listen in the videos below.

And if you want to know, REALLY know, this man that Barack Obama is separating himself from because of mushy political centrism in seeking to get elected, please give this man a full listen in the videos below. Barack Obama is being more and more exposed as a man who used Trinity UCC as a leg up, as a prestige card to play with the black community, rather than a fully participating member invested in attacking the problem of racism head-on. Calling for racial unity is nice and all, but when significant embedded racism still exists in our society, it’s time for troublemakers, rabble-rousers to stand up and speak truth to power, their political careers be damned.

And let this be stated clearly, if you can watch Survivor or American Idol or Dancing with the Stars (“reality” shows) or Lost or 24 or The Office (hour-long escapes from reality into suspended disbelief) or Hannity and Colmes (a show of barking partisan hacks) for hours on end every week, I’m fairly certain you can watch an embattled man (and a fine one at that) talk about something of vital importance for our world today in the videos below.

I’m sitting on some thoughts, but I will write them in the next couple days after wrapping up some loose ends for school. So keep attuned here if you’re interested in catching some of my thoughts on this; I want to contribute to this conversation that is simply not taking place in our society right now. It is DESPERATELY needed, and I want to be a part of it. Even in a little tiny way.

Video #2 of the same speech

Video #3 of the same speech

Video #4 of the same speech

Video #5 of the same speech

Video #6 of the same speech

I don’t know if you had caught this developing story today or not, but Jimmy Carter (a man I look up to very very much) is working hard for progress in the Palestinian/Israeli peace process.  Today, he met with senior Hamas officials in Cairo in the hopes that some common bond could be built.  What made me say, “Attaboy Jimmy!” was the first couple lines from the article,

Former President Carter met with senior Hamas officials in the Egyptian capital today, rankling the Israeli and US governments, which say it runs counter to their policies of not negotiating with terrorists.

Later in the article, the same thing stuck out to me.

During his stop in Israel, most officials- including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert- refused to meet with Carter, angry over his insistence that Israel should talk to Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, and the European Union.

I hope you don’t misinterpret my “Attaboy!” for a blank check endorsement of Hamas as a legitimate governing authority, because that’s not my intent at all. In fact, Hamas has done a tremendous amount of violence and evil on its part over the years that have burned bridges with Israeli people and deeply set back the Israel/Palestine peace process.

My attaboy really has two main dimensions;
1) Jimmy Carter’s got some serious stones to do what he’s doing now

Bigger ones than Ehud Olmert, Khalid Meshaal, or George Bush, at least. Either these “leaders” are so completely blinded to the complex issues that surround seeking peace in this area or are continuing to willfully play off others’ fears, because there’s been plenty of black/white simplistic answers coming from these parties.Jimmy’s in pursuit of solutions and healing, and he’s willing to ask hard questions and meet with the unmeetable because he knows peoples’ lives (both Palestinian and Israeli) hang in the balance. And peoples’ lives are always, ALWAYS more important than the wounded pride and ego of choosing to embrace those you have hated so long you almost don’t remember why.

2) Jimmy Carter’s smart enough to know “terrorist” is just a label that all kinds of organizations throw around, usually to demonize the opposing party in the hopes that your folks will come off smelling like roses, all righteous and stuff. Terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder.

I wrote a few posts awhile back highlighting this fact.

1) One post focused on the reports early in March of a Tomahawk cruise missile attack on an al-Qaeda operative in Somalia.

The Pentagon confirmed that the U.S. military struck a target against a known al-Qaeda terrorist, and I’m sure this was the point at which your average story-reader (especially American) stopped reading. But buried at the bottom of the article, we’re told that the strike destroyed two houses, killed three women, three children, and wounded another twenty people. Now in the bigger scheme of things (beyond the Pentagon thinking they rode in on their white horse, accomplished justice, and rode back out again), how much do you think that missile strike affected that town of Dhoobley? The families of the killed? The injured? The memories that will remain for generations in that small town? The (justified) hatred that Tomahawk will inspire in them? Who comes off as a terrorist organization for the people in Dhoobley? I’ll let you handle that one yourself.

2) Another post focused on a story that emerged April 1 also related to the American government. The story, reporting on a Justice Department memo to Bush, stated

The president’s wartime power as commander in chief would not be limited by the U.N. treaties against torture. Legal counsel John Yoo wrote, “Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion.”

What would be the definition of a terrorist organization? Maybe one that openly flaunts international law and does what it decides is right, with the good of all over-ridden by their own interests? The U.S. fits the description in this case.

3) And the third post had to do with the very Israeli/Palestinian relationship Carter is addressing right now.

It seems Hamas got a sweet whiff of what might bring lasting positive change in the shattered relationship by choosing not to suicide bomb a marketplace, but instead mobilize the people of Palestine in non-violent protest against the unjust security wall Israel has been building. Israel caught a whiff of this plan, and here was their response;

The army intends to prevent the marchers from advancing on the fence when they are still inside the Strip, using various means for crowd dispersal according to a ring system: The closer the marchers get to the fence, the harsher the response.The army plans to fire at open areas near the demonstrators with artillery that the Artillery Corps has been moving to the area over the past couple of days. If the marchers continue and cross into the next ring, they will face tear gas. If they persist, snipers could be ordered to aim for the marchers’ legs as they approach the fence.

It’s not an un-related point that Israel has been building the security walls inside the borders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while acquiring land for settlements by driving Palestinian farmers off the land, refusing to let them back on, and squatting on the land until they declare it “unoccupied” and thus free for illegal settlers to move on.

It is Israel’s handling of this situation that led to Desmond Tutu calling the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians “apartheid.” I think Desmond Tutu would know. It also led to Jimmy Carter writing a book entitled “Peace not Apartheid.” Both men have been charged with anti-Semitism, a challenge that carries baggage since the Holocaust happened only 70 years ago. In this situation though (with both men being followers of Jesus) Jimmy and Desmond weren’t spitting hatred but speaking truth to power, and thinking of the long-term good of both Israelis and Palestinians.

A good example of what not to do, of simplistic and close-minded thinking came from Condolezza Rice (who could’ve been working on this relationship for three and a half years already), who said she found it “hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace.” Well, Condi, Hamas plays a role in the problem, yes. But so does Israel in their state terror on the Palestinian people. And so does the United States in giving a blank check to Israel of support. You’re the Secretary of State of the United States of America, and that’s all you can come up with?

*UPDATE TO ADD* Carter made a speech today (4/21/08 ) as a result of his talks in the region that (surprise surprise) includes concessions Hamas would be willing to make as a result of direct talks. Here’s a quote

Carter urged Israel to engage in direct negotiations with Hamas, saying failure to do so was hampering peace efforts.

“We do not believe that peace is likely and certainly that peace is not sustainable unless a way is found to bring Hamas into the discussions in some way,” he said. “The present strategy of excluding Hamas and excluding Syria is just not working.”

  I’m not sure if you’re familiar with white-bred, incisive beat poet Taylor Mali, but I’ll embed a video of his after these introductory thoughts.  What makes Taylor so funny to many people is how he handles the “likes” and “justs” and “you knows” that interrupt the flow of our thoughts and make us, in his words, “the most aggressively inarticulate generation since, like, you know, a long time ago!”  What makes him so incisive is the last 40 seconds of his following appearance on a comedy show, where he says, “it is not enough simply to question authority, you’ve gotta speak with it too.”

I have several reasons for posting this video, with one being my thoughts above; but I found it so incisive because I can fall into that trap of “aggressive inarticulatism” (if you allow me to use his thoughts to invent a term).  In the last two weeks, I’ve had my local news 15 minutes of fame (or, more accurately, probably 4 min), when two local news channels stopped by to interview members of our church family for our thoughts on the new sanctuary, which included me.  

I’m sorry I can’t post the video from the NBC 29 interview of me, because it’s a perfect example for Taylor.  Here’s the link; to the story, where you can catch a glimpse of what I said, but I think my quote in full was, 

“It’ll be good to, kind of, be back in an area that feels like, you know, a home?  I feel kind of conflicted, because I would really hope that this would just be kind of a gathering place where we have a chance to really learn what it means to be the church.”

I was mortified when I watched it on the news, and that was before I knew about Taylor Mali.

Then, I got a bit of redemption yesterday when TV3 came by, but just a bit, because I still threw in a couple “justs.” Argh! Part of the reason I even said “just” several times yesterday was because my mind was whirring so hard while being interviewed to not say “kind of” or some other inarticulate grunt.  Here’s the link to the TV3 article with embedded video.

And the local newspaper’s (The Daily News Leader) article was great. I really am proud of the work our church family has done together; though by no means is the work done…in some ways, it’s just beginning, as we move away from a focus on the building to using the building as a gathering place for us doing the real work of discipleship.

There’s been an interesting discovery I’ve made by running in the circles I run in (so to speak) recently that underscores for me in a more philosophical way that things are not always the way they seem. In this case, I’m continuing the thought I started with my post on how pictures (which supposedly cannot lie because they’re taken of “reality”) can be manipulated to achieve a certain end (in that case with the intent being to show a “jubilant crowd” celebrating their “liberation” from the Saddam Hussein regime). With this post, I’d like to go deeper beyond the images themselves to the persons or corporations standing behind them seeking to use the images to portray a certain sense of who they are to the public.

Example A: There are two Dove commercials that have received huge airplay in the last year that seem to be a full-frontal attack on how advertisers manipulate images (whether pictures or video) of women to make them seem more “perfect” or “sexy,” which in turn makes young girls and women feel deeply inadequate about their bodies and destroys their self-esteem; not to mention lures men into false ideas of sexuality. Among other places, in the couple instances where I watched Oprah with my fiancee, the Dove commercials received a central place in the advertising in commercial breaks; with Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” tagged on at the end of the commercials. Here are the videos;

First one;

And another; called “Onslaught.”

Sounds good, right? Like how Dove really values young women and desperately wants them to know they matter? The Campaign for Real Beauty site has these cute stories from older women to aspiring young women as well as a “self-esteem zone” where girls can commiserate with one another and seek hopeful alternatives to our culture pushing twisted sexuality on them. And that’s good on a surface level.

A deeper look at the situation, though, reveals a different reality; one of projected image rather than authentic image. Dove is a subsidiary brand owned by a much larger conglomerate corporation that goes by the name Unilever. It just so happens that Unilever carries another brand in their personal care portfolio you may have heard of that goes by the name Axe (or Lynx for those in Ireland, Australia, or the UK). It also just so happens that the Axe brand promise is that it “gives guys the edge in the mating game.” Or, more specifically from their website, the “Axe effect” is “the internationally recognized name for the increased attention Axe-wearing males receive from eager, and attractive, female pursuers.” The different deodorant variants of Axe are marketed for different effects; Clix fragrance should be worn because “the mating game is all about amazing figures. Spray on, sit back, and count your clicks” (how many women you hook up with), and possible Touch users are encouraged to “use Touch under your arms and it’s only a matter of time before some sensitive, sexy ladies want to touch the rest of you.”

Combine these marketing slogans with television commercials like the following (which is incredibly tame compared to the rest of Axe’s marketing), and you start to see where I might be going here.

So Unilever is marketing one brand (Dove) as a way for women to recover “real” femininity and raise their self-esteem in the hopes that guys will recognize “real” beauty. And Unilever’s marketing another brand (Axe) with skinny, scantily-clad women swarming over fragrance-wearing men, encouraging men to mark their conquest of females with “clickers” to measure the numbers; in short, maintaining a message of sexuality completely the opposite of the one they supposedly profess with the Dove brand. Sound contradictory? Of course it is, but the average consumer doesn’t know it; especially when Oprah’s pushing Dove and the “Campaign for Real Beauty” has a slick website and a feel-good message.

This is a classic case of presenting images of products and preying on the desires and fears of various demographics in order to maximize sales. The contradictory message displays Unilever doesn’t give a rip about the self-esteem of women or the evolution of male sexuality and female sexual image in our culture; they’re latching onto both to make a little (or, more accurately, an obscene amount of) coin. This is related to the practice corporations are pursuing now that being more globally-conscious or “sustainable” or “green” is a social fad. This practice is called “greenwashing,” where the corporations don’t change their practices at all (or do in negligible amounts), but hire a PR firm to spin the company in such a way that it appears to care about sustainability; thereby capturing the wallets of those who seem to care about such things.

Unilever is engaging in a campaign of disinformation and manipulation of emotion and desire to sell a product. Not only is this misleading and hypocritical, it is deeply immoral. Clearly, Unilever is not the only corporation engaging in such practices, but this does not absolve them of responsibility. Just another reminder that what something appears to be on the surface is not always so in reality. Be aware that we are considered potential “giving units” with emotions to be preyed on to extract brand loyalty and desire fulfillment. Just a thought.

 When I found out this morning that Sean Taylor (Washington Redskins safety) had died from a gunshot wound, my stomach immediately dropped through the floor.  I agreed with his family friend that this was a senseless death, a frustrating one for a guy who was honestly committed to growing up and being a responsible man and pro athlete. But what came next from the friend stuck in my craw all day long.  Here’s the quote in full;

“Maybe he was trying to say goodbye or something,” Mr Sharpstein said. “It’s a tremendously sad and unnecessary event. He was a wonderful, humble, talented young man, and had a huge life in front of him. Obviously God had other plans.” 

Seems normal, right?  You hear this kind of comment all the time in our culture.  But it frustrates the crap out of me.  Why put the responsibility for Taylor’s death on God?  What did God have to do with this at all?  This was an evil act of aggression by a human being who destroyed the life of another human being.  Maybe this shouldn’t bother me, but it does.  Badly.  At best this sort of comment is syrupy sweet and feel-good.  At worst it makes God an unfeeling tyrant who found it right in his providence to guide the hands and body of a man to break into Taylor’s house, kick in the door, and wreck his wife and family’s life in cold-blooded murder.  

Tell the honest, raw truth; Taylor’s dead because of the twisted actions of a twisted individual.

Just stop, stop it already. 

 Just a couple thoughts to offer today.  I’ve had a chance to think in the last year or so about this “freedom” Americans often claim our army is fighting for.  I hear it everywhere in our society as a phrase to clobber both naive pacifists and traitorous liberals with different ideas about how Iraq should have been handled.  As I’ve wrestled with what this is all about, I’ve done my best to keep my ears peeled eyes open for others working through this same issue.  I happened to come upon an interview online of one of my mentors-through-proxy (Internet and books substituting for face to face interaction) Stanley Hauerwas that shocked me. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but as time has passed, it’s making more sense to me.  Check it out;

“In his reflections on Sept. 11, Hauerwas uses the term ‘American imperialism’ matter-of-factly. He’s not afraid to humanize those who flew jets into buildings on Sept. 11, and to point out what he calls ‘the loneliness of the American people,’ a loneliness he says is tied to their pursuit of happiness.’On Sept. 11, Americans were confronted by people ready to die as an expression of their profound moral commitments,  Hauerwas said in his Silk Hope talk earlier this year. ‘Their willingness to die stands in stark contrast to a politics that asks of its members in response to Sept. 11 to shop.’  

‘Americans are, for the most part, good, decent and hardworking people, but so were the people that supported the Nazis.’  Hauerwas said he worries about ‘how goodness can become deeply corrupted by its innocence….most of the time innocence is deeply immoral because it is such a lie not to acknowledge that we live in a very complex world that we benefit from, and we don’t have to acknowledge the havoc our benefits depend upon.’  

While those who loathe the United States are willing to die as an expression of their hatred, Hauerwas said U.S. citizens have no comparable moral conviction on which to base their lives.  ”A people who have been bred to shop then can quickly become some of the most violent people in the world,” Hauerwas said, “exactly because they’re dying to have something worth dying for.”  

 

Before you get too upset (like I initially did), read the quote five or six times, then take a couple hours (or months) the chew on it from time to time.  I’ve come to see it as deeply insightful over time.  The question he raises is relevant; what does “freedom” represent in America, and at what cost is that American freedom perpetuated?  

Example after example in the last few months has proven to me Stanley’s suggestion that “freedom” in our society directly translates to “shopping.”  If it does not, what is the comparable conviction Americans have to bring that they’re willing to fight for?  The right to vote?  Maybe so, but check out the percentages of folks that exercise that right when the time rolls around.  Right to freedom of religious expression?  How many American folks are really, I mean really, deeply invested with the whole of their lives in the religion (often Christian) they claim? Precious few.

So what IS the mark of American (and by extension, Western) society that takes up most of our attention, time, energy, thoughts and dreams?

I’d suggest it’s cash money, the jobs it takes to get more, the marketing that competes for us to exercise our right to buy their stuff, and the sheer amount of stuff we can buy with that cash.    

Our “holidays” of Christmas and Easter are perfect examples of this.  If those who claimed to be Christian truly deeply valued and respected the two most holy celebrations of their year, they would be up in arms about the mockery our secular society has turned them into. Heck, witches and black-magic practicioners should be pissed at how secularism has changed the height of their year (Halloween) into an avalanche of candy and cute little costumes.  In short, consumerism has taken every day holy and sacred to competing traditions, subverted them, and marketed them under completely different pretenses and seeking different ends.  So now we have Santa Claus (the original Saint Nicholas has to be rolling over in his grave), The Easter Bunny, Thanksgiving football and excess amounts of turkey and stuffing, and Valentine’s Day (a boon for the diamond and Hallmark card industries) as examples.  More examples exist, and they all reveal the central value our society upholds; money, what it takes to get it, and (for marketers) more and more innovative ways to convince consumers they need to spend it on YOUR product. 

Which brings us to Black Friday, the official holiday of the hallowed First Day of Christmas Shopping, the most profitable day of the year for businesses and the height of capitalism.  The day where we consumers camp out at our Best Buys and Kohls and JCPenneys and shopping malls so that at midnight or 4 am or 6 am (whoever opens first) we may spend our money on things we don’t need.  But we have the right to!  

Nobody tells me where I can or can’t spend my money, not no A-rabs or dem Chi-nese or nobody!  

And THIS, my friends, is why Stanley Hauerwas is so spot-on in his diagnosis of our society.  We have nothing to fight for in our society but a vague notion of freedom in need of definition.  And the definition has come to mean the right to shop.  We claim freedom of choice, yet our naivete about our individual capability to make good choices as if we weren’t slaves to marketers reveals not only that we aren’t free, but that we’re overconsumed and cynical and bored.  The system keeps us entertained but unfulfilled, and we are shocked by the possibility that someone would give up that right and fight to recover another vision of what life is to be about.  It’s a clashing of civilizations, the dominant one secular (NOT Christian) and competing visions daring to suggest their commitment is more life-giving and worthy of sacrifice. 

This is a series of unfinished and slightly incoherent thoughts, I’m sure, but Black Friday in all its glory shoved me back to the place inside me Hauerwas twisted into a mess with his comment.  I’d encourage you to wrestle with it.

 In closing, I’ll leave you with one of the most prophetic bands I know of around these days, “The Cobalt Season”, and some of the lyrics from their deeply honest lament/hopeful song “Like Jesus“;   

 

And friends, Romans, countrymen

Won’t you lend me your ears?

This Holy American Empire

Gotta tell you it’s crumblin’ down

To the ground

 

’Cause everything’s for granted

And nothing is for sure

So let’s grab a Starbucks baby

And let’s spend a little more

 

Forget about the dreams we had

Just work and sleep until we’re dead

Are we blind to what’s ahead?

 

Oh Lord, how long?

 

When memory’s for granted

Nothing is for sure

And history goes round and round

As we long for something more

 

We lie and wait for better days

With hope and fear and joy and dread

Or just ambivalence to what’s ahead?

 

I laughed at loud this morning when I read an article by the above-pictured Tom Verducci in my Sports Illustrated magazine (who knows why I still keep the subscription when I can read it online) about the Boston Red Sox championship.

SI journalists are SO TALENTED and well-read and able-to-make-analogies-from-any-walk-of-life incredible, and that makes their stories so rich and (I’m not overstating this); life-giving. The power of good journalism is the ability to draw the reader out of their life into the world of the story the journalist is trying to convey, and that almost cannot take place in the ten-second soundbites of our modern newspapers and magazines; unless the publication makes a commitment to an extended story. Whereas SI is kind of schizophrenic with this because the magazine is chock-full of little snippets to pander to our felt-needs, they seem to carry a significant commitment to articles long enough to develop a story that pulls the reader into its world. They did this for me with their Randy Shannon article a bit ago, they did it with the at-the-time mystifying-yet-awesome National Geographic-like article on great white sharks in the Farallon Islands (I found out later, the book was written by a former SI Women editor…classic case of throwing a friend a bone), and they did it with this simple article. And by they, I mean Tom Verducci.

Here’s some CLASSIC quotes from the article;

“The world championship is all of it: the commitment to player development, the obsessive devotion to detail, the fluorescent-bathed nerds who break down statistics and video as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls, the small army of scouts, the bad dudes — yes, especially the bad dudes — who wear the Boston uniform and strip the will from their opponents one grueling at bat after another. The entire thing is a giant Jenga game; remove any one of the interlaced blocks and the whole damn tower might topple.”

“The Red Sox expected to win? Talk about putting a Bucky Bleepin’ Dent in conventional wisdom. These are not your father’s Red Sox.”

This one’s great;
“But its most amazing achievement is this: It has supplanted the Calvinistic, multigenerational dread of Red Sox fans with the sunshine of optimists. Boston, which once made a gruesome art of losing, now almost always wins the Big One.”

“When the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, church bells rang out across New England and people rushed under a full moon to the gravestones of their deceased loved ones to pass word of the championship. The Nation enjoyed one big cathartic cry. Funeral parlors braced for a boom in business, the now-I-can-die-in-peace crowd suddenly mortally tranquil. This championship carried a lightness of being, a baggage-free, hedonistic escape. Behold the sated, if spoiled, Red Sox fan, a species not seen on the planet since Babe Ruth wore the Sox uniform in 1918, the last time Boston won a world title so close to a previous one.”

“Ellsbury batted .438 in the World Series, and in Game 3 he joined Joe Garagiola (1946) and Fred Lindstrom (1924) as the only rookies to get four hits in a World Series game. He and Pedroia, a 2004 second-round draft pick, combined to reach base 16 times in the four games. They are emblematic not only of a generation of Red Sox players that knows nothing about an 86-year curse, but one that also treats hitting as a kind of a martial art, employing a wicked combination of Zen-like patience and blunt-force trauma.“

This is journalism as art, folks, even if some journalists at times fall flat on their face in trying to be too pithy (*cough* Gennaro Filice *cough* example quote in first paragraph in article here). And art is what our mechanistic, utility-driven, sound-bite society needs. Spaces to take a breath (or lose our breath) in encountering beauty and depth. Don’t give up, SI. And thank you, Tom, for helping me take a breath from the humdrum with your gift.

I was reading for a bit in the instant classic Moneyball (by Michael Lewis) this morning, and he made several observations I found immediately incisive and made my thoughts wander a bit. He’s talking about the game (and management) of baseball, but hopefully you’ll see where my thoughts went. Lewis is talking specifically of Oakland’s former assistant GM Paul DePodesta and his decision to enter the business of baseball rather than a more lucrative finance career;

“He was just the sort of person who might have made an easy fortune in finance, but the market for baseball players, in Paul’s view, was far more interesting than anything Wall Street offered. There was, for starters, the tendency of everyone who played the game to generalize wildly from his own experience. People always thought their own experience was typical when it wasn’t. There was also a tendency to be overly influenced by a guy’s most recent performance: (but) what he did last was not necessarily what he would do next. Thirdly- but not lastly- there was the bias toward what people saw with their own eyes, or thought they had seen. The human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw, and every trick it played was a financial opportunity for someone who saw through the illusion to the reality.”

This is just a wonderfully interesting quote by itself that could be spun off in a number of directions if one had the time and the energy to think/write about it, but in this post, I thought I’d explore the “thirdly” part of Lewis’ quote that included the suggestion that “the human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw.” Just to take you through the progression of thoughts in my mind, I immediately thought “Hmmm…” followed by a moment of the suggestion sinking in, followed by remembering a little of what Neil Postman had to bring to bear on the power of image to overcome rational thought, followed by beginning to wrestle with the “false reality” that can be created by persons with the wherewithal to do so (which preys on the temptation for us to only rely on what we have “seen”). That was the process…I’ll work through it a bit more here following.

I guess a relevant question would be, is it true? Are we more deeply affected by what we see or directly experience than what is said to us or revealed to us outside of our experience? I’m assuming yes, though I’d label that as a temptation rather than an assumed truth. This over-emphasis on experienced truth is one of the deep weaknesses of uncritical postmodern thought as I see it. I could talk about this for pages probably, but that’s not my intent in this post. My basic intent is to expose the basic inadequacy of relying on experience or what one “sees” as a foundation for what is true through a couple simple examples. I recognize there are multiple shades of gray between the black and white of experienced truth vs. revealed truth, but hopefully the reality that what is “experienced” or “seen” can be manipulated shines through here.

The age of the internet complicates things, making news much more open-source and therefore less able to be easily manipulated for propaganda purposes, but it is still very possible (especially if the populace relies on basic news outlets for information) to present something as “reality” when it really is a series of images that have been manipulated to achieve a desired outcome. One example to support this suggestion was the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in the center of Iraq as the U.S.-led Shock and Awe campaign swept into the center of Baghdad in 2003. In describing the fall of Hussein’s statue, Donald Rumsfeld described the images as “breathtaking,” the British Army saw them as “historic,” and for BBC radio they were “amazing.” In the pictures that spread through media outlets like wildfire, there seemed to be a massive crowd of jubilent Iraqis pulling down the statue of Hussein that represented their celebration of freedom from his oppressive rule. Here’s the central picture of that series;

If you check out a Youtube video that follows Fox News’ coverage of the statue toppling, you’ll notice the anchors saying “jubilant seems too mild a word for what you’re seeing here,” followed by poking fun at French governmental officials for their opposition to the “liberation of Iraq.”

After the event, conservative commentator Robert Novak weighed in with his opinion, saying that

“As the war began in 2003, the New York Times required less than three weeks before it ran a front-page report by a star correspondent of the last generation, R.W. Apple, which hauled out the heavy word of the Vietnam generation, quagmire-as in the quagmire in which, Apple wrote, U.S. troops were already bogged down. Three weeks later, those same quagmired troops had sped into Baghdad, watching as jubilant crowds pulled down the great statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of the city and organizing a systematic search for the suddenly deposed butcher of Mesopotamia.”

And these images then were exported throughout the world as display of the celebration that had ensued in Iraq and the momentous change of regime on par with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some of the images follow;

This third image represents the global impact of the photography, as viewed in Frankfurt, Germany.

(pictures linked from here)

So, it seems there was a massive crowd celebrating the end of the Hussein era, right? Not so fast. If you had a healthy sense of skepticism and traveled outside the seeming exultation of the crowds presented by prominent media outlets, you would have found a different picture…literally. And while one could argue which pictures represent reality more faithfully if two different groups take different pictures and claim different things at the event, I think we’d all agree that pictures of wider context usually display a more full picture of the reality.

Take a gander at a bit wider angle shot of the event, then two definitely large-scope shots taken chronologically;



It seems that less-euphoric/less-subjective/less-manipulative news sources reported a much different scene than the CNN/BBC/Fox News one. Journalist David Zucchino interviewed a member of the Army’s psychological operations unit and found that the event was almost entirely put on by the US military. After a US colonel “selected the statue as a ‘target of opportunity,’ the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member.” And when cameras zoomed in on the Marine recovery vehicle toppling the statue, “the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.”

And in the words of eyewitness Neville Watson, a clergyman from Australia,

“Well, there certainly was some jubilation, but I certainly wouldn’t go along with that presented by television. The one that I’ve seen a lot of since I’ve been back is the toppling of the statue of Saddam and I can hardly believe it was the same one that I saw, because it happened at only about 300m from where I was and it was a very small crowd. The rest of the square was almost empty, and when we inquired as to where the crowd came from, it was from Saddam City. In other words, it was a rent-a-crowd. Now, that piece of television has been played over and over again, but I’ve seen nothing of the pieces of television, for example, what happened in Mosul the other day, where the Americans opened fire on a crowd killing 10 and injuring 100 when it became anti-American. So I think the scenes of jubilation have to be balanced against the other side of the picture.”

All in all, the wide-angle shots and different testimonies reveal a much different picture. In total, there were about 200 people in the square, with a vast majority of that number being military personnel and international media (we won’t mention that the square is just adjacent to the Palestine Hotel where the international media were based) along with a handful of Iraqis. And even the spontaeity of the handful of Iraqis is in doubt; one could say those who came after encouragement by the loudspeakers were somewhat spontaneous, but a picture of a central celebrant reveals him to be a member of the “Free Iraqi Forces” militia who were flown into Iraq several days before the statue-toppling. Starting to shape up into a different “picture,” eh? *pun intended* I guess I shouldn’t mention that the BBC reported the American flag initially put over the face of the Saddam statue was one flying over the Pentagon on September 11th either. Seems less and less spontaneous, the deeper we go.

I don’t want to belabor the point, because my intention, again, was just to expose the inadequacy of relying on experience or what one “sees” as a foundation for what is true, because one can be greatly deceived by persons interested in keeping us in the alternate reality shaped and colored by their perspective. And governments (ALL governments) certainly have a vested interest in the support of the populace. Just a cautionary note; don’t believe all that you see. Maintain a healthy skepticism. Be willing to wade deeper, even if it may cost you or cause people to label you.

In a hilarious and sorely-needed interview, David Letterman hammered Paris Hilton time and time again with her prison experience. Even when she stated she was over it and didn’t want to answer any more questions, David kept going, and gave his most incisive thoughts after she quit answering questions. It’s almost like he wasn’t willing to enable her in her life decisions, a life skill her parents could benefit from, I do believe. Here’s the link. Watch her squirm. ‘Bout time someone had the guts.

Meanwhile, Peter King and Jack McCallum continue to be two of the most down-to-earth-yet-inspiringly-great-to-read journalists out there. The first page of Peter King’s MMQB where he dealt with Brett Favre’s resurgence is just great stuff, and McCallum’s appreciation for the great tradition of baseball was shown in his most recent article reflecting on the Phillies and his childhood. In a juiced-up age of baseball, there’s a load of lessons to be learned from the past that can inform the present and the future. One of those lessons is a blue-collar approach to the game that the present-day Phils carry; kudos to my second favorite team on their NL East title.

And while I’m providing links to great journalism, check out this article by Gary Smith on Miami head coach Randy Shannon’s life leading up to this job. While sitting in the bathroom doing *ahem* “#2,” I was reduced to the point of tears to see what Shannon has been through in his life, and how his hard-nosed perseverence speaks to those of his players who’ve grown up in the same inner-city hard-scrabble existence. I don’t agree with what Randy thinks a man should be, but for me to say that would almost be patronizing the depth of pain and struggle he’s been through. I’ve learned a lot about my coddled middle class existence over the past year through intentionally exposing myself to thoughts by persons who either grew up in or have intentionally immersed themselves in situations of desperate poverty, and my former presumptions were shallow and exactly what I hinted at above, patronizing. So please, please, take some time out (the bathroom’s a great place) to read the Smith article in full for a shocking, encouraging, sad, hopeful, yet a bit empty, story.

p.s.  My boys are playin’ defense, it seems. They sacked DMcnabb 12 times; 12 TIMES! And DE Osi Umenyiora had six of them! Eli’s coming around as a leader, Derrick Ward’s a nice surprise until the beast man Brandon Jacobs comes back. I’m pleasantly surprised so far. Here’s the link to the game roundup.